Casino Deal Sounds Familiar

Edgar Backs Watered-down Version Of Daley Plan

April 10, 1994|By Patrick T. Reardon, Tribune Urban Affairs Writer.

It started with a single riverboat casino.

That's all Gov. Jim Edgar was willing to consider for Chicago back in December 1992, when Mayor Richard Daley and a trio of big-money casino operators were pushing for a huge land-based gambling complex near the Loop.

If Daley asked in a very nice way, the state might deign to give the city one gambling boat, Edgar and his aides indicated. But a land-based project with a handful of casinos? Forget it. Too big, too uncontrolled, too much wagering. The governor was adamant.

No longer.

When Edgar came out last week in favor of a riverboat casino-entertainment complex proposed by Daley, he was endorsing a project that is amazingly similar to the land-based proposal he rejected 16 months ago.

Indeed, Daley's complex is as close as you could get to having a land-based gambling development-without actually having the casinos rooted in the soil.

Consider the similarities:

- The "riverboats" in Daley's complex will have more in common with casinos on solid ground than with the present crop of Illinois riverboats, which under present law must ply local waterways. Daley's complex will feature casino-barges that will be on the water but won't have a motor and won't have to leave the dock.

- The suggested sites for Daley's complex-Wolf Point, northwest of the Loop, and Roosevelt Road, southwest of downtown-are the same as those mentioned two years ago for the land-based casino-entertainment complex. And the size of the projects are similar: 100-150 acres for the floating casino facility, and 150 acres or more for the land-based one.

- The Daley administration is predicting that the casino-barge complex will attract 9.5 million to 10 million visitors annually, or nearly as many as the 11.8 million visitors expected at the land-based development. That's despite a sharp increase in local and national gambling competition since 1992.

- Like the land-based proposal, Daley's casino-barge complex will feature a theme park with sophisticated simulator rides and other attractions.

To be sure, the casino-barge facility will be smaller. It will be built at a cost of $800 million, compared with $2 billion for the initial proposal. It will also result in 7,000 to 8,000 jobs, compared with 12,000 predicted for the land-based development.

In addition, the floating casinos will have only 6,000 gambling positions, such as slot machines and seats at blackjack tables. That's fewer than half of the 14,175 planned for the land-based operation.

Despite those similarities, there are significant differences between the casino project initially proposed and the one now on the table, according to Mike Lawrence, Edgar's press secretary.

"This is significantly down-scaled in scope, which will diminish the law enforcement problems," he said.

Restricting the opportunities for people to gamble was a key reason that, in December 1992, Edgar was willing to permit a single riverboat, but no more for the city.

"The bottom line is that the governor said during his 1990 campaign-and he meant it-that he did not want Illinois to be wide open to gambling," Lawrence said.

"If he had supported land-based casino gambling in Chicago, we would have had communities throughout Illinois saying they wanted to have land-based casino gambling."

Edgar said last week that his support of the floating casino complex in Chicago is based on the need for parity. Cook County was specifically excluded from the original riverboat legislation.

Now, he's in favor of extending the possibility to Chicago, at least, out of a sense of fairness.

This approach, Lawrence said, makes it easier to prohibit the proliferation of gambling elsewhere, something that would have been much more difficult by opening the door to a new form of gambling.

In addition, Lawrence and Jim Williams, Daley's press secretary, noted that access to the boats would be limited because admission would be charged and gambling would only be permitted during a "cruise."

Even though the city casino-barges and the riverboats now operating in Illinois wouldn't have to leave the dock, under the Daley proposal, gambling will be conducted in sessions of a certain length, just as if the boat were going out on the water and coming back.

Once the session starts, new bettors won't be permitted on the boat. Anyone who leaves during a session won't be able to return for that session.

"Access is limited. You can only be on the boat for two, three or four hours. With a land-based casino, people could spend 20 hours in a row in a casino," Williams said.

But access won't be quite so limited. The practice on the state's present riverboats is to permit bettors to stay aboard for the next cruise if it isn't completely booked.

And, far from reducing gambling, the isolation of a floating casino may actually increase wagering.